Adam wrote (in the 'is there life in blues or folk after all?' topic -

I think it's a shame that a blues player needs to use gimmicks to get noticed. I think it's a shame that a blues player needs to use gimmicks to get noticed. But whether they ARE gimmicks or not is a whole 'nother discussion.

OK, Adam, let's have that discussion.

I disagree entirely (needless to say.)

I doubt that I'd have had any interest in SoD (aka Ben Darvill) if he wasn't making the sound he's making, and the technology is intrinsic to that sound.

Because Ben builds up his whole track from vocal growls, squeals, thuds and caught breaths, the man is the purist manifestation of someone being fully physically present in their music. So to just think of the technology he's using as 'gimmicks' is a serious mistake.

The technology is simply a tool (just like his harmonica is) for allowing the very essence of the man to become a part of his music. You literally hear him - how he wants to be heard - and it's the nearest you're going to get to being inside his head.

Funnily enough when I was talking to Ben yesterday after his Thames Festival spot, and I asked him if - given an unlimited budget - he'd prefer to have his music fleshed-out by a full band? I was pleased to hear that the answer was, no. He'd have a couple of girls up there doing backing vocals (as he sometimes does anyway) but other than that, he might just bring in some horn players halfway through the set, just to add a bit of extra colour. But, essentially, he was making precisely the kind of music he wants to make, and his audience, including myself, wants to hear.

This was what I was hoping he would say, as I'm convinced that what makes his sound special is the glitchy layering of textures, and the pleasure of watching him sonically tightrope walking as he drops in one sound after another. It would have been a little depressing to have been told that the sound his audience loves was just a comromise for him.

It was interesting to look around at the faces of the crowd and see that the majority were either happy or intrigued, but there were a few who were simply baffled; they couldn't hear - or didn't get - where he was coming from, as the say. I believe that if he'd just been a 'blues player,' as Adam put it, he would most likely had ended up with a 50% walk-out of that audience. They've heard that; been there.

I think it's a mistake, in this instance, to say you're only as good as your tools, because, in Ben's case, those tools are impotent without his songwriting and vocal sound-generating skills, just as a piece of charcoal was just a piece of compressed carbon matter until Degas got his hands on it.

At one time the electric guitar was a gimmick. Even the damned microphone was a gimmick. Ben Darvill is just the one-man-band having made an evolutionary jump forward; his gimmick is no more a gimmick than the caveman's spear.

howard male wrote: I believe that if he'd just been a 'blues player,' as Adam put it, he would most likely had ended up with a 50% walk-out of that audience. They've heard that; been there.

Yes, I'm sure you're right. I realise that I'm very much in a minority in liking to hear people apply themselves - and I mean that in the fullest sense - to a tried and true (dare I say traditional?) format. I'm not saying that SoD isn't entirely sincere in his use of what I rather disparagingly described as gimmicks, it's just that I find them to be a bit distracting from what it is that he's actually saying. I like the formality of the blues - be it a 12 bar or a one chord stomp. I like the way that a blues performer like B B King, say, will take a thoroughly familar theme like Louis Jordan's "Let The Good Times Roll" and make it his own. It's a renewal, and I'm all for renewals. I'm also all for people using aspects of the form to say something of their own - like Tom Waits or Beefheart, or Peter Green with songs like "Man Of The World" - and maybe that's where SoD fits. Again, it's just what you like is fine. I like formality in music as much as experimentation. Not so keen on eclecticism but I love Kate Bush who's the queen of it. Go figure... But there I think it's because she's so damned talented that she somehow manages to transcend her own questionable taste!

Case in point: Dr John's 1st album, "Gris Gris", loaded with production gimmicks. I love it as a 60s curio. It's a great album but totally dated. Why? BECAUSE of the gimmick production.

it's just that I find them to be a bit distracting from what it is that he's actually saying. I like the formality of the blues - be it a 12 bar or a one chord stomp.

Or what you think he's saying? Or what you feel he should be saying?

You see, I still hear that blues sensibility and those blues structures in his music (his love of all those old blues records is probably as obsessive as yours) but I also hear a natural, unselfconcious pop sensibility, and a desire to make something unique and new of the music he loves.

Will SoD end up a noughties curio in the way, you feel, Dr John's first album was a sixties curio? Possibly, but I don't think so, because I don't hear gimmicky noises when I listen to him, I hear an homogenous, tactile, good-enough-to-eat, wall of Son of Dave sound, that he, and no one else, could make. It has an absolutely unique sonic fingerprint which makes it much greater than the sum of its loops and catchy choruses.

As for eclecticism and Kate Bush: it's not what you do, it's the way that you do it, as they say. And, yes, I rate her highly too.

When does an effect (whether employed by the artist or the producer) enhance a record and when does it mark it forever as a period piece?

Sometimes it can tug it in both directions at the same time: the phased drum fills on 'Itchycoo Park' are part of its classic appeal - part of the very essence of the record - but they're also a sonic Proustian reminder of the era it stemmed from.

It's unlikely Peter Frampton's early 70's live album would have shifted quite so many units without that, now, horrible vocoder(?) effect on his guitar.

When Bowie and Eno created that huge, gated snare drum sound on 'Low,' little did they know that for the next decade the modest thwack of a snare drum would end up sounding like a controlled explosion - on thousands of records which were consequently made unlistenable.

So what records did you once love, but now find fatally scarred by gimmicky production effects?
And which records still sound great despite the novelty knob twiddling and mad scientist pedal employing? After all, it was effects pedals which gave Hendrix his signature sound.

howard male wrote:[b] Because Ben builds up his whole track from vocal growls, squeals, thuds and caught breaths, the man is the purist manifestation of someone being fully physically present in their music.

Thing is though, he doesn't build up his *whole* track from vocal squeaks et al. He builds up his *backing* track from that. He then adds some fairly conventional songs that do fairly conventional things influenced by jump blues and Dr John and others.

I'm a sucker for human beatboxing and inventive sampling, so it's hardly surprising that I like the way a lot of SoD's songs start. But for me they don't build on the promise of their opening seconds. They renege on it, if anything. Like Amy Winehouse or Lily Allen, there are energising beats there, but their takes on the music of the past isn't enough â€“ there isn't enough content there in the actual tunes and songs. The meal doesn't live up to its presentation, as it were.

I'd prefer to hear Son Of Dave in the producer's chair for someone like Steven Finn or J.E.A. Wallace or Samuel James or Serious Sam Barrett than singing his own songs, to be honest.

Just occasionally, once in a blue moon, you'll hear an album that seems to organically synthesize music that is indisputedly "of the past" with music that is indisputedly "of the time". But pretty much the only incidence of this I can think of right now is Portishead's first album, "Dummy". Some of OutKast's music does this too.

I'm amazed that nobody is mentioning Son of Dave's intriguing lyrics. I think he has the whole package sorted, although not all his songs are as good as his best. By definition!.

But on the other hand, the public prefers Seasick Steve, who takes the more traditional route favoured by Adam. Nothing but him and his guitar, and his album has sold 80,000 copies in the UK alone, on a tiny one-man record label through an independent distributor.

Well, SoD's lyrics are just further evidence that the man is absolutely the real thing. Because his stage patter - and his off-stage patter - exhibit exactly the same wry sense of humour and mischievousness as those lyrics.

I love Seasick Steve too, or course. Although, to be Devil's advocate here, it could be argued that his music is more of an affectation; a deliberate, carefully crafted recreation of our romantic notion of what a traditional blues performer should be like.

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howard male wrote: So what records did you once love, but now find fatally scarred by gimmicky production effects?.

The late great Camaron's landmark record, shorthandedly referred to as flamenco's Sgt Pepper was "La Leyenda del Tiempo". Possibly the most famous track was "Volando Voy", partly because of its revolutionary use of electric bass and synth. Now this track sounds horribly dated and, to me, almost unlistenable. The rest of his catalogue is free of these kind of effects, and remains timeless.
As I might have said elsewhere, nothing dates records like keyboard sounds. I don't think there's another instrument that so fixes a sound in its time, due to musicians wanting to use the latest technology or gimmick.
Incidentally I asked Rita Ray recently what did for the music of Ghana (her country) and why there's nothing now like the glorious reissues coming out from the 70s. She identified the synth as the main culprit

As per usual (it seems to me) my level of sophistication is at odds to most of you. I love effects and I adore the synthesiser. Yes, without doubt, many of the sounds have been done to death, BUT, the timbres still have the power to move this listener. I still get a thrill when I listen to Rick Wakeman twiddle away with a good zeyummm zyeeemmm sound (hehe). Tangerine Dream and Kraftwerk rhythms still get me, and a good phaser/flanger has me gasping with delight (er!). Even a vocoded voice, if subtle still impacts positively with me.

Musicians even when in the raw are always looking for an individual sound from their guitar, amp, whatever. Look how many voices a proper organ has.

So, effects yep, but if the music is crud, then no effect will lift it.

I'm so glad I'm on this forum, acting as the voice for the musically unwashed :()

for instance I really enjoyed the UK's Top 50 Madonna songs on 4 Music last weekend - never really paid much attention to her madgesty before, but seeing all her videos was quite eye opening (in more ways than one).

but this forum is mainly not dedicated to pop. We all like some pop, with dodgy effects. I enjoyed Yazoo on the radio this morning. It's more questionable, taste-wise, when applied to WM. This is one of the great debates / schisms / conundrums. Many musicians around the world want to play, and record and tour with, their latest take on their local music, synths, 'cheesy keyboards, screaming guitars, warts and all.
Overall we over here prefer their 'old stuff' which they might refer to as their Grandad's music. Mainly because their new stuff sounds often like a move towards our modern stuff, which maybe we do better. Either way we want to hear something 'new' and different. Our new is their old so to speak. Their new is often our slightly old, did it 2 or 5 years ago. A debate with no conclusion

David Flower wrote:The late great Camaron's landmark record, shorthandedly referred to as flamenco's Sgt Pepper was "La Leyenda del Tiempo". Possibly the most famous track was "Volando Voy", partly because of its revolutionary use of electric bass and synth. Now this track sounds horribly dated and, to me, almost unlistenable. The rest of his catalogue is free of these kind of effects, and remains timeless.

Until recently I'd avoided buying that record, precisely for that reason, the dated sound of 'Volando voy' and to a lesser extent the title track. Then towards the end of the year El Pais gave it away as a free CD (how good is that?) and I finally got round to listening to it. It's a breathtaking, amazing record despite the effects, fully deserved of its canonic status.

Neil mentioned the one instance where somehow despite all logic effects have contributed to the timelessness of a genre, dub reggae in the 1970s. I would agree with that, it's the music I always come back to in the end. Also, despite Manu Chao's big two late 1990s CDs being full of 'effects', I still find them timeless.

Don't know whether you'd call it effects or production but I had problems with many French-produced African CDs right up to the mid 1990s. I remember one early Salif Keita CD I bought and tried to like but couldn't on the basis of it's production. Also Khaled's Sahra, even with the classic Aisha, it's difficult to get past the 1990s production values on most of it.

Generally I think 'beats' shorten the shelf life of any record. Remember that 'Balkan Beats' CD everyone got excited about a few years ago, try going back at playing the first two tracks now without thinking this is a more dated than a very dated thing.

Conversely, I reckon I'll still playing CDs from the turn of the century like Lhasa's 'La Llorona' or Odessa Klezmer Band's sadly overlooked 'Isaac's Dry Tree' for years to come, because both are free from any instrumental or production effects which tie them to the time when they were produced.